


Sono Qui

by AphroditesTummyRolls



Series: To Be Human [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Andromache's Hatred of God and England, Andy's POV, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Family Feels, Gen, Graphic depiction of torture, M/M, Missing scene? Kinda?, Outsider POV of Joe/Nicky, Protective Andy, The Witch Trials, sequel to Brother of My Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:07:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26033923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AphroditesTummyRolls/pseuds/AphroditesTummyRolls
Summary: Joe’s words rung in Andy’s head, tugging at the center of her like a weight she hadn’t known she carried: "I will never understand why grief drives people to become agents of the thing that hurt them…"She reached up and gripped the pendant around her neck, feeling the grooves of the pattern that she’d memorized so many thousands of years ago.She tossed Nile the keys and muttered something about the address to the Provence safehouse. They could stop by Goussainville on the way. Nile must’ve seen whatever was in her face, because she just nodded, her eyes flicking to her wound for a split second as they all slid into their seats.Andy tracked the young woman’s gaze as she took stock of them, and wondered what she saw. Andy had let the mask of indifference fall off her face, owning the pain in her side and the exhaustion in every muscle. She must look like shit, but Nile wasn’t judging her at all.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker/Accountability, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Everyone
Series: To Be Human [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1887949
Comments: 82
Kudos: 400





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO!
> 
> This is a continuation of Brother of My Heart! My brain just wouldn't stop creating headcanons until I made a series about it. So, this story is from Andy's POV, dealing with the immediate fallout of the lab and Booker's betrayal. 
> 
> If you like it, please shoot me a comment below! <3

Andy left Booker on the beach. 

She felt his gaze follow her, but couldn’t bring herself to look back. 

It wasn’t as if they had never separated before— as if the four of them had been constantly attached from the time they finally found the Frenchman, even after months and months of dreaming and searching. There were plenty of times where they spent months, or sometimes years apart. They took breaks from each other, they traveled. Just a year ago, Andy had declared that she needed a break— was that last year of being alone the thing that led Booker to betray them? Maybe they should’ve stayed together. She never should have left him. She understood how it felt to be alone in the world… to lose someone so precious that life loses its color. 

Andy had left Booker plenty of times. It wasn’t something she liked to think about now, but she had… She had assumed he was handling it like her. Somber and drunk, _wishing_ for some type of release. They’d talked about it enough times. But _not like this._

She didn’t think that leaving him to his own devices would break him like it had. It had never broken her. Hell, she didn’t think she could be more broken than she already was, and she still hadn’t done _what_ _he_ _did_. 

Her side ached, stitches pulling tight as she walked. 

As she crossed the beach to the steps, Andy looked up at Nile, then at Joe and Nicky, and a swell of protectiveness swept up in her and strangled all other emotions. 

Maybe they needed a break from the fighting, but Andy wasn’t letting them out of her sight. No one was being left to their own devices this time. 

Last night, Joe had _sobbed_ into Nicky’s shirt, and Nicky had clung to him like he was going to disappear. Nile had nearly collapsed from exhaustion while she re-stitched Andy’s wound. The wound Andy only had because Booker had _shot her._

Through the haze of pain and blood loss the day before, she had seen Joe and Nicky laying helplessly on those tables, and she could barely reconcile the horror of it with the Booker she thought she knew. The images flashed before her again as her mind dug deeper into _what went wrong._ The memory sent a flurry of thoughts through her head, and she shook it to stubborn blankness. She blinked the heat out of her eyes and clenched her jaw, swallowing the familiar bile of guilt. 

None of them had had a choice, entering this life. But they did have choices in what they did with it. Andy knew that now. She had been blind to that— to _so many_ things— for _so long._ She had been blind to her friend, making a choice that had never even been an option. 

Still, it was a choice _he_ made. 

_There had to be a price._

Leaving him this time felt different than any other. It wasn’t just her newfound mortality making her knees stiff and hard to lift as she walked up the steps. It was the feeling of leaving someone behind, maybe _for good,_ that had her feeling like there was a tether between her and her friend, getting tighter as she led the way to the car. Like she was outstretching a rubber band.

She took a deep breath when she finally closed the driver side door behind her. It pulled her stitches, and she grunted as the wave of pain passed over her. 

It was just another reminder that her breaths were numbered. Maybe Booker was right— maybe they would never see each other again. 

“Andy?” 

“You okay, Boss?” Nile and Joe both broke into her thoughts, shaking her back into the present. 

They were all looking at her, seeming to hold their breath. Nile’s keen eyes scanned over her quickly, studying her for traces of blood. Andy just looked back at her, and yeah— she was sure she looked like shit, but she knew she hadn’t ripped anything this time. 

Andy wasn’t used to healing taking so damn long, but she knew when she was in danger from an injury, and she wasn’t now. 

She needed a drink. 

“Yeah. Yeah, just forgot about it for a sec.” She managed a twitch of her lips in the rearview mirror at Joe’s tired face, and met Nicky’s stormy, concerned gaze. “I’m okay.” 

No one seemed convinced, but they let the silence reign all the way back across the countryside. The moors rolled by, and Andy tried not to think. 

She didn’t let herself wallow in just how much she _hated England._

She didn’t wonder where Booker would go. 

All of the people she had to worry about were in the car right then, and she knew where they were going. They had to go back to Surrey, and put the fear of _them_ into an ex-CIA agent. Then, they had to go back to Paris— Charlie safehouse. Nicky and Joe’s swords were still there, and there were some things they needed to sneak out from whatever red tape the authorities had closed it off with. 

These were the people she was responsible for— her _family—_ and she wasn’t about to fail them again. 

* * *

Copley looked worn and tired when they arrived. It rankled something under Andy’s skin to think that _he_ felt like he’d had a rough night. She barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but she’d rather look straight through him. She had a gaze like cold stone. 

It was a look Andy had perfected over the millennia, and it showed in the way the man in front of her shuffled his feet. 

Copley swallowed, choking out a stilted “Good evening.” 

Joe scoffed, and Andy half expected him to lay into him right there in the foyer. Like Nicky had with Booker. The tension rolled off both of them in palpable waves. When she glanced back, though, Joe’s lips were pressed into a firm line, giving Copley a look to rival her own. 

Nile was the only one who wasn’t openly hostile. But even she looked like there were a thousand places she would rather be as they trailed along into the house and up the stairs. 

The last time she had walked up those stairs, she had Booker at her back. 

The last time she had walked into that room— with walls covered in their faces, the evidence of their _existence_ — she had bled all over the floor. She was shot because Booker was at her back. She was bound, and wrestled to the ground. 

Part of her expected to see Booker right there, in front of the window, by that stupid modern armchair. But he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. They’d left him on a beach in Whitby with tears in his eyes and a resigned set to his jaw. 

She swallowed and took slow steps to the meticulously curated board of _stuff._ There were things she remembered— days where she’d known the camera was there, or her priorities were on the lives saved rather than avoiding the press. Maybe if Andy had cared about the cameras or the witnesses a little more on those days, Copley wouldn’t have found them at all. 

Still, she allowed herself a flicker of pride. All these faces of people they’d helped, who went on to help others. The still-sore wound in her shoulder pulsed, and she felt her lips curve up into a small smile— _Today I patch your wound, and tomorrow you help someone up when they fall._

She wished that she’d gotten that clerk’s name. 

Copley spoke of them with an awe that she didn’t know how to describe or react to. It had been so long since they were even acknowledged— let alone _revered._ But every half formed memory of her thousands of years on earth seemed to come into sharper focus as she looked at the little printed faces and the baffled headlines. 

That flicker of pride grew bigger, warmer than she’d felt in a long time. Almost like hope. 

“Maybe this is the why, Andy.” She couldn’t tear her eyes away from it all until she heard Nile break the contemplative silence. 

The young woman looked back at her with such confidence that the world seemed to steady itself a little more. For so long, Andy felt the turn of time under her feet while she stood still, running in place, spinning her wheels, exhausting herself. 

There was something so liberating about having a fresh perspective on the team. Maybe there was even a little liberation in having an end date for her life, too. Andy had a sense of urgency, and a _trajectory_ for the first time in 500 years. 

So, she turned to Copley. She fixed him under her stare again and put steel in her voice. She could feel Joe close at her back, his own penetrating gaze going over her shoulder and straight into Copley. 

All that, and she was still met with “I'd be honored.” 

She wished that could be it. That it would be tied up in a bow, and they could exchange burner phones and disappear into the unknown. The Provence safehouse might be nice— but they _couldn’t_. Not yet. 

“Do we know what was left at the lab?” She finally made herself ask. 

Copley shrugged, “I can see if I can find out—“ 

“They took an awful lot of samples from me and Nicky.” Joe sighed, grimacing. He slipped his hand into the other man’s and tangled their fingers reassuringly when Nicky’s lips pursed into a minute frown. “If those are still there—“ 

“You mean we have to go _back there?”_ Nile exclaimed, “It’ll be crawling with cops by now!” 

“I don’t know if I can do it, Boss.” Joe stumbled a little over his words, shaking his head. He was breaking her heart— ever since last night, Joe had been so shaken, so quiet. She didn’t know what had happened in the lab, but she wished that she could kill every doctor and every guard all over again. He still looked just as tired as he did when the fighting ended. 

None of them had properly slept that night. Andy’s side had been throbbing, and it was impossible for her to do more than doze. Booker never even laid down. Instead, he sat at the small kitchen table and drank until even _she_ thought he was drinking too much. Nile had managed a couple hours, tossing and turning. Nicky and Joe, though, had looked the picture of their usual sleep-- Nicky cuddled back against Joe's chest, and Joe hidden behind Nicky's shoulder for all but an arm slung around his waist. They hadn't slept, though. Andy knew because she was awake when Nicky finally rolled over to face his lover. She heard the whispered admission of _I can't sleep, I have to be able to look at you._

She heard Joe's whimper, and the quiet exchanges of Arabic between the soft sound of kisses. It had left a strange, complicated swirl of emotions in her gut that ached like a bruise.

When she looked into Joe’s eyes, then, in the middle of Copley's office, she could still remember the way he had spilled over with tears, how he had curled himself into Nicky from the moment the safehouse door closed, how _tightly_ he had held him. Nicky had only gripped him back, impossibly tighter. Even now, he’d get the most terrible, lost look on his face whenever Joe stepped too far out of their shared orbit.

And Nile? Nile was just so _new._ She was mourning her entire life, she needed time. She deserved better than this, they all did. 

They needed a Break, with a capital B. 

“We will not have to go anywhere, Hayati.” Nicky spoke up, his voice low and soothing. Then, he turned his eyes on Copley, and they seemed to burn into him. “Copley will take care of it.” 

He sounded so certain, a command in his quiet voice. Everything about him said that there was a right answer to this statement, and Copley had better say it. 

Andy’s lips twitched into something small that wasn’t quite a smile. Affection and concern both reared up in her gut, her brow furrowing, but she stayed silent. 

She didn’t really want to leave the tying of all these loose ends to a man who had so recently betrayed them. She didn’t trust him. Wiping away their digital tracks was one thing, but the hard evidence? The blood, tissue and bone of the people she loved most in the world were sitting in sterilized medical jars, and she wanted to watch it burn. She wanted to _know_ it was done— 

But Joe was shaking his head, his dark eyes pleading with her. 

Yusuf Al-Kaysani had followed her into impossible odds, failed missions— he had been tortured on her behalf. He and Nicky had been at her back for nearly one _thousand_ years. And he was standing there, silently begging Andy to not make him follow her back to that lab. 

It made her chest tighten and her heart stutter.

Nicky had clearly made up his mind, too, but he wasn’t looking at Andy— Nicky fixed his eyes on Copley. 

His jaw was set and his feet were rooted into the rug like he was daring someone to try to push him over. His eyes gleamed just like they had the night before, staring down Booker until he flinched. He was _scared_ , he was _angry,_ and he was beyond arguing. 

If they weren’t going to listen to Joe, Nicky was going to make them. 

Copley squirmed— only an idiot would be able to be oblivious to the fact that not all was forgiven here. And, for everything he was, the man was not an idiot. “I can make a couple phone calls, grease some palms. It’ll be taken care of.” 

The tension lingered over the group as silence fell, hovering like humidity in the air. Andy had felt the same way before thousands of battles— the anticipation had her muscles wound tight around her wound. She didn’t want to fight today. 

“Then we should let you get to it.” She cut in, sharing a pointed look with Nile, who nodded and started making her way to the door. Her clever gaze was trained on Joe and Nicky, watching as they finally got themselves moving, still hand in hand. 

The only things Andy wanted were to get out of this house, to have a stiff drink, and to take a long nap. She wanted her side to stop hurting, and her _friends_ to stop hurting— 

And Copley stopped them at the threshold. So close to freedom. 

“I know an apology doesn’t begin to cover it…” he began, his voice stilted and his eyes shifting as he reached out and brushed his hand on Joe’s arm. 

“You’re damn right it doesn’t.” Andy watched as her friend pulled his arm away, his face turning stormy, but he wasn’t snapping. His anger wasn’t just anger— he was hurt, he was confused. And he wasn’t just talking to Copley, not really. This was for someone else. “You claim to have done this out of love and grief— to make a _better world._ But what about _our_ world?” He was gripping Nicky’s hand, finally finding the words that he had loved Booker too much to say. “They took him apart in front of my eyes! I was _helpless_ , Mr. Copley.” His voice cracked, and something cold and wrathful wrapped itself around Andy’s heart at the thought of it. “They threatened to tear us apart, to keep us apart _forever._ ”

She wanted to get out of here, to find someplace safe to hunker down and watch over them. To let her family lick their wounds and learn to feel whole again— she couldn’t stand seeing Joe so broken. 

“Your wife, she died of a slow, degenerative disease, right? Hooked up to machines, enduring painful treatments? Did you feel _helpless_ as you watched the person you loved suffer?” He continued, shaking with the audacity of Copley’s useless little words, “I will never understand why grief drives people to become agents of the thing that hurt them.” 

Copley looked like he’d swallowed his tongue and choked on it, eyes wide and misty. 

Nicky crowded up behind his lover, letting Joe press his back to his chest and take a deep, shuddering breath. Wrapping his arms around his waist, he nudged his nose against the soft skin behind Joe’s ear and whispered something gently in Italian. Andy couldn’t quite hear it, but she knew what needed to be said when Nicky met her gaze over Joe’s shoulder. Andy heard him loud and clear: _please get us out of here._

“Forgiveness is earned, Mr. Copley.” She said to the stuttering man, her voice brooking no argument, “You can _earn_ it.” 

And they left him on the stoop of his too-quiet, too-clean house with its ugly modern furniture and its boards of obsessively compiled research. Joe’s words rung in Andy’s head, tugging at the center of her like a weight she hadn’t known she carried. 

She reached up and gripped the pendant around her neck, feeling the grooves of the pattern that she’d memorized so many thousands of years ago. 

_I will never understand why grief drives people to become agents of the thing that hurt them…_

She tossed Nile the keys and muttered something about the address to the Provence safehouse. They could stop by Goussainville on the way. Nile must’ve seen whatever was in her face, because she just nodded, her eyes flicking to her wound for a split second as they all slid into their seats. 

Andy tracked the young woman’s gaze as she took stock of them all, and wondered what she saw. Andy had let the mask of indifference fall off her face, owning the pain in her side and the exhaustion in every muscle. She must look like shit, but Nile wasn’t judging her at all. 

Joe was pressed into the corner of the backseat, simultaneously stretched out and curled in on himself as he scrubbed a hand over his curls and down his face. He had Nicky leaned into his chest, their hands tangled together on top of his heart. 

Nicky was rubbing circles on the inside of Joe’s wrist. Andy glanced back just in time to watch him press his lips over Joe’s pulse there. 

Nile’s lips flickered into the shadow of a sad smile, and Andy wished she could hear what she was thinking. Was she remembering a great love? Was she missing someone? Was she just happy to see two people taking solace in each other after horrific suffering? 

Andy caught herself holding onto Quynh’s pendant again, and blinked out the window as they made their way towards France. Out of England. 

_Fuck,_ she hated England. 

She needed a stiff drink. And a reason to stop thinking for a while. 

* * *

_She would say later that it wasn’t that bad. That they were together, and that was all she needed._

_And in hindsight, she supposed it was true. Being tortured side by side with Quynh was better than being apart. It was infinitely better to be put back into the thumb screws, or be driven mad by lack of sleep, or having red hot irons branded to the soles of her feet when her lover was screaming bloody murder at her tormentors from the other side of their cage. It wasn’t that she wanted her to see it, but it was a reminder that she wasn’t alone. That at least, if Andy was getting it, Quynh wasn't._

_It was better than the alternative._

_When she woke from another nightmare, another interrogation, or another execution, Quynh was there. She would brush the stringy tangles of her hair out of her eyes with as much tenderness as she could while maneuvering her shackles away._

_Her hands had stayed soft despite every death and indignity, and Andromache could manage a smile for every new day. For her. For her soft hands and the archer’s calluses on her fingertips._

_It was better than the alternative._

_But that didn’t mean it_ wasn’t that bad. _It was Hell._

 _It was Hell to watch Quynh, over and over, in the hands of their captors. These men of_ God _wrapped her head in ropes and wrenched her skull until it cracked. Blood ran down her face, the bridge of her nose snapped, her eyes brimmed with tears as she tried to fight the pain. Every agonizing hour, Andy listened to her screaming under the pressure on her head, punctuated only by the stupid,_ ridiculous _question of witchcraft._

_Every time she died, they didn’t know if it would be the last. Andy didn’t know if she’d ever see her love again without the blood soaking her hair, and the jagged crosses of raw flesh on her broken face. Her eyes glazed over, and their cage went silent._

_The deafening silence of waiting for Quynh to wake took the breath out of Andy’s lungs. Every time, it seemed to take longer. Every time, she gasped back into life and Andy felt like her own breath came rushing back to her lungs._

_Those were the days when she ached to be able to be close to her. To be the one who brushed back her hair, kissed her chapped lips, and felt her heartbeat under her hand._

_But those were the days they were most likely to be left where they laid. Quynh, trembling back to life on the cold stone, shackled to the floor underneath the cross of a false god. And Andy, rasping out Quynh’s name from the other side of the room, as if she could put enough love into the sound for her to feel the ghost of her comforting touch—_

She didn’t make a sound as she fluttered her eyes open in the passenger seat, her forehead pressed to the car window. 

When she had been walked into that lab, Joe and Nicky were strapped down to tables. They were carefully separated, left vulnerable and bare to the chilly, recirculated air. There was no blood, but Andy wasn’t fooled. The air reeked of bleach. There were delicately arranged instruments on the trays between their beds. Their eyes were hooded with exhaustion, and their heart monitors beeped fast. 

Her family had been tormented. And even though every part of that room looked like the opposite of what she had suffered, she still felt like she’d been thrown back into her English cage. The basis was still the same— to be tortured for who you were, in the hands of people who would never understand, who had decided you were not _people_ anymore, to be held back from each other’s comfort… 

It was dark out, the streetlights zipping by. She could make out a sign that looked French. 

Andy swallowed, about to open her mouth and ask where the Hell they were, when she paused. 

The car was tense, and there were voices around her. 

“You can’t just _go_ right now, guys!” Nile’s voice whispered, “We’ve gotta stick together.” 

“We’ll be with you as far as Provence, Nile.” Nicky tried to placate her. “We’ll stay for a couple days to get you settled, but after that we’ll make our own way.” 

Andy felt a pit open up in her gut as her sluggish brain caught up to the conversation. They were leaving? They all needed a break, sure, but… the last time they separated, she lost a soldier. They couldn't leave _now_. 

“It’s more conspicuous if we stay together.” Joe added. 

“You mean you two want to fuck off to your love shack in Malta—“ 

“That’s not true.” Nicky cut in, sounding a little offended, “Not mostly, at least." 

“We need a little time, and Andy needs to recover in safety.” Joe picked up when Nicky trailed off, “Which brings us back to us splitting up to keep Andy safe—“ 

“I am driving all the way to Paris to get your swords— _swords—_ and you think Andy’s safer without you?” 

Even if it was, technically, easier to hide when they spread out, the idea made every fiber of her being yell out in protest. Why did they want to leave? 

The car was dark and silent for a long few seconds, and Andy could damn near _hear_ the gears turning in everybody’s heads. She held her breath for Joe and Nicky’s reply. 

She wouldn’t stop them if they really needed to go. She’d never been _that_ kind of boss— at least, she hoped not. 

Maybe she didn’t know what kind of boss she was, if she could just let her friends slip away under their grief, or fade into insanity at the bottom of the ocean, or let them bleed out under her hands, or get stolen by medical sadists… 

Nile’s voice broke into her thoughts again, “Just… Just stay? Please? Until Andy’s wounds heal— I mean, I don’t know what you guys aren’t telling me... I don’t even really _know_ you guys. But I want to, and I…” 

“Nile, it’s okay...” Joe whispered, and Andy felt the air shift in the car as he reached forward and squeezed her shoulder, “We’ll stay till Andy’s healed.” 

“We want to know you, too.” Nicky chimed in, “That’s not it at all. It’s… we’ll stay.” He sighed, and Andy couldn’t help but let out a long, relieved exhale along with him. 

They’d stay. And even though her heart still seemed like it was clenched in some terrible vice, wondering what the Hell the problem was, Andy could hold on to just this. She could hold onto the fact that they’d stay. 

* * *

The sky was just starting to lighten as they reached Goussainville, maybe a half an hour before dawn. Andy kept scanning the tree line, searching for the smallest glint of a fender or a headlight in the dwindling darkness. They couldn’t afford to be caught. They didn’t know what kind of authorities or misguided detectives they’d be bypassing to get to their stuff. 

Nile was right— she had killed _a lot_ of people in that church. If anybody had stumbled on _that,_ there was sure to be a problem. 

They parked on the shadowy side street, far enough away to keep themselves discreet. 

“I’ll make the entry—“ Andy said, already pulling her stitches taut as she took off her seatbelt. It sent red hot sparks through her entire body, but she thought she did a good job of hiding it. Thank you, Darkness. “Only one of us should go. It’ll be easier to go undetected.” 

“Boss, is that wise—?” Nicky tried to say gently, but for some reason it hurt even more than the wound itself.

 _“Yes, Nicky.”_ She snapped enough to cut him off in his tracks, “It’s just a bullet wound!”

She was out in the spring air before anybody could say a thing more about it, slamming the door with a little more energy than _sneaking_ would typically imply. It wasn’t gonna be a problem. 

Ducking around the headstones along the path, Andy clung to the last of the shadows before the sun broke the horizon. There was no one around, but she still stayed close to the stone wall, hand on the gun in her jacket. The door was still kicked back on its hinges, only separated from the elements by a piss poor barrier of caution tape. 

She didn’t bother resisting the urge to roll her eyes at the lackluster reaction of local police. Whatever. It made her job easier. 

Their makeshift home was just as they’d left it— besides the grenade shrapnel and the crime scene tape. 

The swords were easy enough to find, in the umbrella holder by the door— _seriously_ lackluster police force— and Andy wrapped them in an old coat as she tucked them under her arm. She ran down the short list of everything else she needed, picking up Joe’s sketchbook from where it had toppled to the floor and ended up under the chair.

Next to it was the chair Booker had died in. 

Kneeling on the floor with her fingers on the spine of the worn leather book, Andy blinked heat out of her eyes. She studied the dried blood and exposed filling of the chair that had been ripped apart by a grenade that Booker may have orchestrated his damn self. 

She remembered holding him, trying to shake her friend awake. His skin was starting to go cold under her hands as she clutched at his slack face, she had felt _panic_ flush through her veins when he refused to wake. 

But that was just it, wasn’t it? What they had both wanted for so long— to not wake up. Maybe while sitting in that chair, he had simply refused to wake up. For all she knew, he could hear her calling to him as she yelled at him for trying to die without her, and he had simply tried to keep his eyes closed to try to will himself to die. 

she wondered if Booker was playing dead.

If this revelation was happening two days ago, or any other time in the past 200 years, Andy would’ve shrugged at it. She would’ve simply understood the urge— she’d done it before, too. They both had played dead so many times, wishing it would take. 

But now, she wanted to sit him back in that chair just to smack his teeth out of his mouth at the thought— had Booker been trying to die _while in the process_ of selling them out? Was he trying to avoid the reckoning of what he’d done? A rush of anger bubbled up her throat, even hotter than the tears in her eyes. 

It had just been _Booker,_ being a coward again, trying to die before he took responsibility for what he’d tried to do to them— for what he _did_ do to Joe and Nicky. 

_Nicky._ Regret dampened her thoughts. She didn’t mean to snap at him in the car. She hadn’t even looked back to see the look on his face while she said it, probably because she knew the naked concern that would be in his eyes. But she had heard his teeth click together as he closed his mouth when she cut him off. She remembered the sigh that came from the backseat as she slammed the door. 

That wasn’t the kind of leader Andy wanted to be. Maybe that was why they wanted to leave. 

She glanced around the room for anything else they had forgotten before she left, and recognized the open paperback still on the kitchen table. Without thinking much about it, she snatched it up and tucked it against her chest with the other things. 

Then, she slipped back out into the early morning light. 

The swords went into the trunk, but before she swung around to her own seat, Andy opened the backseat door. She tossed the two books directly into Nicky’s lap, ducking down just enough to fix him and Joe with a little smile. A quiet _forgive me_ passed between them, and she waited for her friend to smile back before she closed the door. 

Her side ached and she was already winded again by the time she reached the driver’s side and opened the door. 

“Time to switch off, Kid. I’m driving.” 

Nile shot her a look that reminded her of drinking half a bottle of vodka on a Russian plane. “You’re injured, Andy— you need to rest.” 

“I _did_ rest. _You_ drove all night.” She didn’t budge, leaning against the open door. 

The other woman opened her mouth to argue, glancing at the two men in the back as if she was about to say _why can’t one of them do it?_

Andy looked her right in the eye and shook her head. 

Nicky and Joe needed each other right now. If she had gotten Quynh back after their captivity, she wasn’t sure she would’ve ever been able to let go of her again. The idea of separating her friends, even just by rows of seats in a car, felt inhumane to her. 

Nile sighed before unfolding herself from her seat and standing, stretching her weary muscles and trading off the keys. 

“You let me know when you need to switch off again.” 

“Thank you, Nile.” She nodded, and it wasn’t just about the car. 

“I trust you.” She replied, half-warning and half-admission. Andy clapped her on the shoulder as she passed, and slid into her seat. 

Joe and Nicky had shifted at some point while she was sleeping. Nicky was now perched in the middle seat with Joe curled into him, nodding off against his shoulder. Barely awake, his dark eyes gazed down at their intertwined hands, and then he looked up to meet Andy in the rearview mirror. 

“Ev’rything okay?” 

“Yeah, everything’s fine.” She smiled softly, “Get some rest, you look like shit.” 

He chuckled, breaking into a grin while Nicky snorted, jostling his spot on his shoulder, “Thank you, thank you.” 

Things felt a little more normal as she turned the key and got them rolling toward the next safehouse, looking forward to a more permanent destination.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey! 
> 
> i dont have the energy to post a real note-- maybe tomorrow? im super depressed, folks. 
> 
> i hope you like this. im on the fence about it, might edit later. please let me know if you like it <3 
> 
> cool thanks <3

Joe and Nicky had bought the Provence safehouse— or maybe they had built it? Andy couldn’t remember— back in the 1990s. It was sturdy and a little squat, but the breeze could still blow straight through the open windows and make it feel like that piazza in Venice back in the 1560s. Open and airy and bright. Andy wasn’t sure how they’d done it— she didn’t know shit about building houses— but it was one of her favorite residences they kept. 

It wasn’t huge by any means, sure, but it was bigger and better than anyplace they’d stayed in a long while. That meant actual rooms, decently modern amenities, and _real beds._

She sighed to herself as the dove gray stone and green metal roof came into view in the distance. The windows were all rolled down enough to let in the spring breeze, blowing her hair back and invigorating her tired bones. She took a breath as deep as her stitches would allow, and caught the scent of the lavender farm on the other side of the hill. Midday was just behind them, the sun heating up the grass and making the earth feel warm and inviting. 

Andy was looking forward to a waterproof bandage and a long soak in that old clawfoot tub that she knew was in the second bathroom. 

Stepping out of the car left her joints cracking and groaning, her muscles protesting, and she cursed once again that horseback riding was no longer an inconspicuous form of transport. At least it seemed that her soreness wasn’t just another new side effect of mortality. Nile was working some feeling back into her arm where she had fallen asleep on it. Joe was yawning, stretching out long towards the sky. It exposed a strip of skin between the waistband of his pants and his shirt. Nicky’s face went soft, pausing to lean against the car as he unfolded himself from the backseat. His eyes were liquid and dark, warm as he zeroed in on that unremarkable bit of skin. Glancing back to check on him, Joe caught the gleam in Nicky’s eyes and beamed the first true smile that Andy had seen from him since before the beach in Whitby. Suddenly, the world felt very small, too intimate for her. 

Andy looked away, her hand tracing the pendant on her neck as she walked around the car, trying to look busy.

Usually, she would crack a joke or clear her throat at her friends. Sometimes, she would fix them with a look that was half wry bemusement and half affection. She would punch Booker in the arm when he rolled his eyes, and she would swallow her own memories of love. 

Booker wasn't here, though. It felt too raw to joke, and she was left with a split second of profound love that wasn’t hers to see. 

_All he did was look at him,_ she thought, letting the moment roll off her back. _Get yourself together._ The voice in her head sounded like Quynh. 

This time there was no joke to make, so she just started grabbing bags from the trunk.

“Ah ah, no—“ Joe beat her to the handle of a duffel, suddenly at her side with a furrow in his brow “You can get the swords, Boss. I’ll handle this.” 

“I’m not an invalid—“ 

“You are injured. You’ll pull your stitches out.” He argued flatly. There was no trace left of that sunny warmth in his eyes from when she’d seen him a second ago, only the sharp glint of stubbornness. 

_Damn it._

She let go of the handle of the bag, and let her friend hand her the coat full of hardware. 

Nicky and Nile were already headed up toward the house, laden with bags and groceries from town. Nicky almost sent them all over the porch as he fumbled for the key. It made Andy acutely aware of the meager load she was carrying, and she grit her teeth against the feeling of helplessness that swam up in her gut. 

The pain in her side was more encompassing than her shame, though, radiating out into every part of her like poison. There was a clammy sheen of sweat on her forehead that she could feel sticking to her hair, even with the breeze and the cool shade of the covered porch. Nile offered her a shoulder of assistance as they made their way inside, and despite Nicky and Joe’s watchful gazes studying her— making her want to be spiteful— Andy took the help. 

“So, you guys _built_ this place?” 

Andy was grateful for the distraction from the pain and the goddamned _infernal_ itching of modern adhesive bandages. She paused in the front room, taking in Nile’s wide eyes at the smooth, white walls and dark wood rafters. 

“I was gifted the land by a noble that we helped back in… when there were still nobles,” Joe shrugged, “and I held onto it through some phony descendants, with…” _with some forgery help from Booker_ went unspoken, and Andy watched the tentative air of peace around him corrode into dust when he thought of it. 

“They finally got around to building on it during one of our breaks in the 90s— right, boys?” Andy helped them, “After Bosnia and the Hanish Islands.” 

Nicky hummed, “We needed something to do with our hands after that.” He nodded, already lifting the first aid kit out from under the sink— when and _why_ had he found the time to put first aid kits in all their houses? They were _immortal._

Well, they _were_ immortal, she supposed.

“And you built this? D’you guys have a lot of love shacks hidden in the countryside of Europe?” Nile joked, even as she took in the house around her. 

Nicky tsked at her. “D’you hear that, Hayati? We have _love shacks.”_

“I prefer the term _romantic getaways.”_ He specified with a smile, winking at Nile from across the room as he started pulling dusty sheets off of the furniture. He was such a good actor that the levity almost felt real. “But we’re not the only ones who stay here— this is Andy’s house, too. And… and now it’s yours, Nile.” 

“Your room is the second door on the left— the bathroom is across the hall.” Nicky cut in, “Rest, relax. We’ve been on the road for a long time.” 

Nile visibly deflated with the relief, like a marionette with cut strings, finally free. Andy felt the smile spread across her face as she leaned against the door and watched her go— she may not remember much about her first few deaths, but she knew that time to process was essential.

It wasn’t until after she had disappeared down the hall that Nicky turned his gaze on her, gentle smile still in place. 

She lifted an eyebrow.

“Andy," He stretched out a hand like he was asking her to dance, back when they all still danced, "May I please refresh your bandage?” Joe was chuckling behind him, and it was the only overt indication that Nicky was even making a joke at all. 

They were _trying._ They were all trying to be okay. 

“Well, if you’re being so polite about it…” Even as she rolled her eyes, she couldn’t help but grin at his subtle humor. She took his hand, and let him lead her from the door to the sofa. 

She let Nicky sit her down, kneeling in front of her as he opened the first aid kit and set about his business. The room felt a little lighter— as if they weren’t all carefully sidestepping Booker’s absence. The space he would usually occupy felt like a black hole in the living room, but Andy tried to enjoy the moment. For their family’s sake, they tried to ignore the weight of the last few days. 

Joe was the one that finally sighed into the silence, the pile of sheets wrapped up in his arms. “Nicolò, I’m going down to the cellar to start a load of washing.” He said it like it was easy, but his body language looked like he was telling him he was leaving for war. Leaving his side. 

Nicky paused, the last of his fading smile dropping off of his face in record time. It took him a second to find his voice, nodding and managing “Okay. I’ll start dinner once I’m done with this.” 

He didn’t look at Joe, focusing on his task with new vigor. Joe, on the other hand, lingered in the threshold for a moment longer, watching the back of his head and shuffling his feet from side to side before finally, he forced himself to walk out the door. 

They were trying to act casual, but everything about them said that if they weren’t in each other’s line of sight, the world would end. Andy didn’t blame them. Really, she felt like she understood, but she didn’t say a word. 

This was a good opportunity to take a long look at Nico, at least. 

For all his humor, his face was drawn and pale with exhaustion. Nicky always had circles under his eyes— the curse of a light sleeper, Andy could sympathize— but now they were dark, grayish purple. It set off the green of his eyes and made them look fever-bright. 

He was silent, his hands steady as he checked over her wound. His gaze locked on and stayed there with a sniper’s precision, his muscles bunched up tight.

She opened her mouth to speak, only to let out a hiss of surprise and pain— Nicky had pressed a cotton pad saturated with disinfectant to the open gouge of her wound. 

“I’m sorry—“ he murmured, being as delicate as he could as he applied pressure. It lit up every nerve ending in her entire fucking body. “I should’ve warned you.”

“ _J_ _esus…”_

She barely heard the little huff, but Nicky quirked his lips wryly as they locked eyes, “He’s never really been your style, Boss.” 

Everything _hurt_ , and then it didn’t. Nicky removed the pad, and she felt like she could breathe again, “It’s a figure of speech.” She grunted, taking a minute to breathe before feeling his finger gently poking the tender skin around her stitches. 

_“Fuck, Nicky—“_

“Is the adhesive bothering you?” That was what he was poking at. The pink bumps where the irritation had raised up her skin. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s itchy as Hell.” 

He was looking at her with those big, guileless eyes, and it squeezed her heart. He looked so _tired,_ and she worried about him. 

“Were you going to bathe?” 

She only nodded, the cool air of the room on her exposed nerve endings tying up her tongue. 

“I’ll put on a waterproof bandage, then. After you’re done, come back. I’ll wrap it with some more old fashioned gauze. It won’t itch as much.” 

“How _are_ you, Nicky?” She had meant to say _thank you._ Fuck. 

Her friend blinked, surprised. “I’m fine.” 

It was complete bullshit. 

Between him and Joe, Nico was the liar. Joe was painfully sincere. Every flowery word of poetry, every dramatic story— maybe sometimes they were exaggerated, but Joe believed every word. 

Nico was the liar. Kind of. It was never serious— it was like he saw them as bets. He would make up little white lies to tell to strangers, like he was trying to see what he could make people believe. Usually, he had the charming ulterior motive of trying to make Joe laugh. Once Andy had known him for a few hundred years, she considered him a _terrible_ liar, all of the minuscule little cracks in his poker face seeming obvious to her. 

He didn’t usually lie _to them,_ though. Not to his family. 

If it was any other day, Andy might not have cared too much. She’d shrug, tell herself that he just didn’t want to talk right now, and watch him a little closer for it. But, it was their first day without Booker, after all the lies he told and the damage he did, and Nicky’s banal lie sent an electric zing of pain up her spine that had nothing to do with her bullet wound. 

“Bullshit.” She called him out, fixing him with a look that she hoped could say all that she couldn’t. “ _Bullshit,_ Nicky.” 

She wasn’t mad. She wasn’t mad, but now she was thinking all over again about the conversation in the car last night. The one she wasn’t supposed to hear. She remembered that Nicky and Joe didn’t even want to be there, and it _hurt_. 

Nicky swallowed, eyes darting over his first aid kit as if it held a way out. She reached forward and touched his face, slipping her fingers into his hair and forcing him to meet her eye as she found her words. 

“You don’t have to tell me any details. Just… Just no lies, Nico. _Please.”_

He looked ready to cry, his eyes going red around the edges and his lashes growing damp. Andy felt prickling heat in her own eyes, and didn’t try to blink it away this time. 

If she ever wanted him to talk to her, she’d have to meet him where he was. And he was teary eyed and tense, knelt at her feet with one hand gripping the antibiotic ointment so hard that it might pop the tube. So, she stroked the hair at the back of his head, and let him see her eyes. She smiled at him with a watery wobble in her lips. 

His gaze flickered to her wound and back to her eyes, clearing his throat. “I’m so _glad_ you’re alive, Andy.” He finally rasped. The words felt jagged and broken, settling in her chest, where her lungs couldn’t expand without a sob tearing from her throat. 

She swallowed, and her watery smile became a grin. 

“Me too.” She choked out, finding that she meant it. 

They had their moment, letting the affection linger in the air as the sun sank just enough to shine in the window. She ruffled his hair and leaned back again, wincing at the pull on her stitches. He rolled his eyes at her carelessness, and dug into the first aid kit for his bandage. 

Andy couldn’t help but keep smiling, “D’you have first aid kits at all our safehouses? For a bunch of immortals?” 

He huffed a laugh, smearing ointment on her side, “I try to keep up to date with medical treatments. Joe,” he smiled, “Joe lets me practice wrappings on him.” 

“You and Joe are playing doctor?” Andy teased, even though her hands itched for her pendant. 

At least it put some color in his cheeks. He chuckled, but for a split second, he looked tired enough to fall right over onto the floor. He put a little mischief in his gaze for her, even _winked,_ but she wasn’t fooled. 

They were all _trying_ to be okay, but it seemed like Nicky had hit a wall. 

His hand trembled the slightest bit as he pressed the waterproof bandage to her skin— tense, like he was adrift and alone, not sitting on the floor in his own home. 

“Thanks.” was all she said. For all the emotions that had just passed between them, now all she could say was _thanks._

Maybe this was why they wanted to leave. 

Nicky nodded absently, instinctively searching the room as he stood. He was illogically looking for Joe, and not finding him. He swallowed, jaw setting in that quiet way that would’ve been imperceptible to someone who knew him less. His eyes were a little too wide, lost and terrible, and she wanted to tell him to just go downstairs and drag him back up here. 

“Yeah, no problem.” He muttered, “Come back when you’re done, and we can wrap it.” 

Andy bit her tongue, and forced her feet to move her down the hall. 

* * *

Days crept by, scented by sunlit clover and lavender blossoms, trampled down by the gravity of the Booker-shaped hole in their lives. 

Sometimes, the golden light of morning and the slow routine of simply _existing_ were enough to distract them. Joe would make coffee while Nicky cooked breakfast; Nile would mutter quiet _good mornings_ with puffy eyes and her phone clasped in her hand. Andy didn’t know if it was from sleeplessness or tears, but she could hazard a guess. 

She didn’t ask, and wondered if that was the right choice. 

The young woman had questions, though, and Andy took that as a good sign. She buried her worry and told story after story— things she thought she had forgotten. Rodin, the Baussenque Wars, playing couples with Nicky, Joe, and Quynh to hide their same-sex relationships in places where they were less tolerated. When she couldn’t talk anymore, she’d try prompting Joe into one of his tall tales of the Renaissance— when Nicky was his muse in a _slightly_ more professional sense, and they nearly blew their cover by starting a new art movement. 

He _loved_ that story. 

Andy waited for his eyes to light up, and his grin to break through his beard, but it was different this time. His sparkle was dimmer, a deep-seated anxiety still settled in his face, even though his words were bright and his story as enrapturing as ever. 

No matter how hard they tried, things were just _different_ this time. Andy would move the wrong way, and tug the stitches holding together the wound Booker gave her. Something miserable stabbed at her heart every time she grabbed two glasses to go with her bottle of whiskey, or when Joe set the table with five plates instead of four. Nicky kept making too much food. 

Seeing time race by for so damn long, she thought she’d become too jaded for any changes to surprise her in this life. She was arrogant— she was an _idiot_ to think that. 

Andy was an idiot for a lot of reasons. And that was not the kind of leader she wanted to be. 

It was the third day, dangling on the edge of evening, when Nile found her on the small back terrace. 

“You’re gonna have to start taking it easy on that,” she nodded to the drink in her hand, “You’ve got a human liver now.” 

She downed the last of her glass with a raised eyebrow and a pointed smirk, “If it makes you feel better, whiskey isn’t breakfast anymore.” 

“No, it doesn’t, but at least I know how low the bar is for you.” the younger woman cracked a grin as she shook her head. 

She slipped into the seat across from Andy, who wordlessly lifted the bottle and accidental extra glass. Nile only shook her head, propping her elbow up on the table and holding up her cheek. Sleep hooded her gaze, but she seemed perfectly content to look out at the purple fields in the fading light. 

Silence with Nile had quickly become companionable since she joined the team— she had a sense of security about her that kept things from ever being really awkward. If she was quiet, it was because she didn’t want to say anything, and Andy appreciated that. 

For a long few moments, the only sounds were the birds in the trees and the quiet din of Joe and Nicky, presumably cleaning up the kitchen. 

“I tried to help with clearing plates-- Joe nearly chased me out of the room. I would’ve insisted, but it seemed like they needed a minute.” She finally said, “Are they always like this?” 

“Like what?” 

“Like… I mean, it's really sweet. It doesn't bother me... and I’m starting to understand that they went through something way more terrible than we got to see, but… but they are, like, _glued_ to each other’s sides.” She tore her eyes away from the landscape to meet Andy’s, and she hoped she didn’t look as taken aback as she felt. 

“What d’you mean?” 

Nile shot her one of those incredulous looks, “The Italian, the Arabic. Some languages I’ve never even heard before. They almost never speak English. I took Spanish in high school, but I can only piece together so much. And the touching! They are _always_ touching each other— even just laying on the sofa, reading a book, Nicky’s got Joe’s head in his lap. Or, Joe’s got his arms around Nicky’s waist while he cooks dinner. It’s all the time, I can’t believe you haven’t seen it.” She shrugged, glancing back toward the door into the house, “I thought maybe this is just what it’s like with them, and you were used to it.” 

Andy wished that was the answer for a flabbergasted second. 

She hadn’t seen any of that— not since that last moment when they got out of the car. Which meant that they just didn’t want her to see it. 

Ever since they arrived, it seemed like they were trying to stretch their orbit back out to their usual comfortable distance. Nicky and Joe were typically reassured by simply sharing space, saving their physical affection for their more private moments. She thought they were trying to be _normal_ again. Sure, they still searched for each other in every room, and the atmosphere was charged with it whenever they were close enough. Like they were resisting magnetism. But she hadn’t wanted to think about it. It sent her reaching for her pendant sometimes, just to feel that energy. 

Some nights, Andy would be walking to bed late at night, and she could hear them as she walked past their door. The hushed cries and moans, the muttered Italian, and the creaking bed springs. It reminded her of how tightly they held each other when they first reached Scarborough, when Joe had thrown his arms around Nico like he was going to disappear, and Nico kissed him like he was trying to become a part of him. The gentle voice at night that came through the door was enough to make her brace herself on the wall, drunkenly swaying where she was rooted to the spot— just the bitten off sobs and the sound of _cuore mio, io sono qui. Sono qui, sono qui…_ It was enough to make her close her eyes and feel tears on her cheeks, to miss Quynh so fiercely that the whole world felt like it was no longer hers to live in. Not alone. 

But she thought that _that_ was where they were in their recovery— coping in private, and trying to keep things normal with the group. Trying to make Booker’s absence less monumental.

She couldn’t believe that she had missed it. Maybe this was why they wanted to leave. 

“No, they’re… they’re not usually like that.” She replied, clearing her throat. “That’s only happened once before.” 

“Yeah?” Nile said, everything about her asking to hear the story. 

“You sure you don’t want a drink?” she smirked sardonically, answering a question with a question, “This is a rough one.” 

Nile still shook her head, but she sat up at attention. Waiting eagerly. 

Andy sighed, sipping her own whiskey and refilling her glass before it was even empty. 

“We were looking for Quynh—had been for about 70 years— as part of a privateering crew run by someone who’d been on the ship that took her.” That crusty old bastard had been the last one still alive. It was their last shot, even if Andy wouldn’t admit it yet. She swallowed a mouthful of whiskey and let it burn. “We’d only been on the damn water for a few weeks when we were boarded by pirates, and Nicky got taken.” 

There were few things in this life that Andy was certain that she would never forget. The look on Joe’s face when he woke up from his cannonball wound and found that Nicky was gone? That was one of them. He had screamed himself hoarse, crying Nicolo’s name into the empty ocean, taking out his anger and fear on the corpses already strewn around the deck.

Andy had been the one to collect his scimitar from his trembling fist and remind him how to breathe. She understood— she knew the deep, gut wrenching feeling where the earth was no longer under your feet. She had bled through her shackles to get to Quynh. 

“I had a choice— I could take my last shot with the only man who might know where Quynh was, continue looking, and lose both Joe and Nicky in the process; or…” 

“You could give up the search for Quynh, and follow the ship that took Nicky.” Nile finished for her as Andy choked on the tight dryness in her throat. 

She just nodded. 

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she replied, more breath than sound, “but in the end, it was no contest. We hadn’t had a lead on Quynh in 50 years… And I wasn’t going to lose another soldier.” 

She wasn’t going to let what happened to her happen to them. 

“It took us the better part of a year to find him— they’d tried to kill him on the ship, and he’d healed before their eyes. They took him as some sort of novelty, and he changed hands again and again. We finally caught up to him in the Americas.” 

She sipped her whiskey again. 

When they finally found Nicky, he was half starved and shackled to a wall in some rich sadist’s basement. He’d been bought and paid for, hidden away and kept weak-- apparently, he had a tendency to kill the guards when he wasn't. Andy took out most of the hostiles on their way out while Joe scooped up Nicky, trying to help him walk. 

They didn’t let go of each other for weeks. 

“After we got him to safety, he and Joe were attached at the hip. Like now, I guess. At first, Nicky went totally silent. He didn’t say a word for almost a week. Then, they spoke to each other almost exclusively in their home languages for a month. Nicky never said what happened to him— at least, not to me— but he was like a skittish colt unless Joe was close enough to touch.” 

Nile nodded, looking back toward the door with a quiet expression. 

Andy didn’t tell her how she’d reacted. Sitting on the outside of that desperate embrace, seeing those soft kisses and touches, listening to the murmurs of _sono qui_ and _Hayati._ She had clutched the pendant over where her heart should have been, and tried to drown herself in alcohol. She had spent hours on the beach, looking out at the empty water, and held her breath, just to see how long she could. 

She had been broken in England— they had carved out the soul of her and left her full of the jagged, broken pieces of what they wanted her to be, in their stupid, zealous, _temporary_ world. She tasted nothing but bitterness, she felt nothing at all. Nothing, until she looked at Joe and Nicky— wrapped up in an embrace, Nicolò shivering and glassy eyed, Yusuf trying to reassure them both that they were safe. That they were _together._

When she saw them, she felt every shattered remnant of what had been done to her and her love, and it was _agony._ Why didn’t _they_ get to be together, too? What God had deemed them undeserving of happiness? 

She lasted six weeks before she exploded, taking out all her rage and despair on the only people left in the world who cared about her. 

After that, things promptly went back to _normal._ To the three of them, trying their best. Carefully sidestepping the soul-sucking void of Quynh, looking for new jobs, staying on the road and avoiding the sea. They kept the evidence of their recovery to the darkness of the night— Nicky held close to Joe’s chest, Joe with his back to the wall. She didn’t even see them kiss again for another year, when Nicky’s face had filled out again and Joe’s smiles came more easily. When her loss became just a little more distant. 

Andy refilled her glass, and shook the bottle at Nile again, who rolled her eyes. 

Then, she took the bottle and Booker’s glass, filling it with the last of the whiskey and sent her a pointed look, “Just this one time, okay? Just so you aren't the one finishing the bottle.” 

It startled a snort of laughter out of her, and she nodded, “That’s fair.” 

Andy missed Booker, and Nile didn’t fill that space. She didn’t come outside with a bottle to replace the last, baggage to commiserate on, or a late night in mind. Nile wasn’t trying to be him, and she missed it. But this was still good. 

It was good to have companionable silence to think through, and a fresh set of eyes to remind her of what she had missed. Even about the people she knew the best. 

They drank their whiskey as the sun sank behind them, while their friends went to bed early.

* * *

Andy and Booker could stay up until all hours. Her with her memories, and him with his nightmares. Both about Quynh. They would split the bottle, and then another. Then another. 

At the beginning of his immortal life, they were usually silent, but it wasn’t the type of silence that Andy shared with Nile. This was heavy, bogged down in the mess that was Booker and Andy’s horrible lives. Their losses. 

One of their first real conversations was in 1838, after Booker’s second attempt to contact his family left him broken-hearted. His wife’s funeral. It was a bad day. 

_“So, Joseph and Nicolas…” he finally said, slurring through the back end of the second bottle._

_Andy raised an eyebrow, ready to beat away anything that was less than accepting, “What about them?”_

_“Well,” he cleared his throat, looking down into his glass, “they’ve… they’ve been together a long time?”_

_At that, she couldn’t help but laugh, defenses melting. Booker had an awkward charm— probably would’ve had real charm, if he ever cared to use it. “Just about 700 years. All of it pretty damn poetic, once they stopped killing each other long enough to learn each other’s names.”_

_Booker huffed a laugh, shaking his head with something a little more than disbelief._

_“You went to war, don’t tell me you’ve never seen a—“_

_“That isn’t a couple soldiers blowing off steam! Andy, that’s…”_

_Love. It was love. She watched him twist his wedding band around his finger, his lip wobbling for a moment before he cut it off with a rough swallow from his glass._

_She waited for him to gather himself, to find the words he was looking for swimming in his booze-saturated brain. He squinted, mouth opening and closing a few times, thinking._

_She took a sip of her own drink, remembering the painful bitterness of being surrounded by the definition of what you’ve lost._

_Something in his face went sour, and his chuckle was humorless as he shook his head, “I don’t understand it.”_

_“It’s not any different than you and your wife—“_

_He flinched at the mention of her, shaking his head furiously. “No, not that— that’s… they love each other. There’s no point in arguing something so undeniable. But, what kind of goddamned luck d’you have to have to come into this life together?” He rasped, mouth twisting, agonized._

_She didn’t have a single word to reply with. There was nothing to say, nothing to make him feel better. She knew the pain too well._

_She didn’t tell him just how much it hurt to be torn apart after so long together, or how love was a different animal when it spanned millennia._

_Maybe, if she had told him that more often, things would’ve been different..._

She went on with the routine of their quiet life, keeping a keener gaze on Joe and Nicky. The memory of Joe’s face, waking on that ship without his love all those years ago was still imprinted in her mind, at the forefront now that Nile reminded her. The feeling of acute guilt and bone deep grief was fresh in her body, like the loss of Booker had become Quynh’s absence as well. 

For all the things she remembered from that time, though, Andy couldn’t remember a single thing that she said to Joe and Nicky when she tore into them for the injustice of losing Quynh. When she attacked _them_ for being able to be together. She couldn’t remember a bit of it, only crying and crying, digging her hands into the sand and tugging at her hair. 

And then, the two of them quieted their relationship. For her. 

Were they remembering it, too? She was watching them closer now, and she felt it like a blade between her ribs. 

The need to be _together_ was in every minute of their day. The way they brushed shoulders and bumped hips at the sink while doing dishes, and the way their fingers overlapped as they passed plates at dinner. They let their hands linger like it took everything in them not to grab for each other, an undercurrent of desperation running between them. Like reality changed when they let go. And, of course, there was still the exhaustion that hung on them, and the lost looks at empty rooms when the other wasn’t there. 

She couldn’t believe she hadn’t put it together, but she couldn’t _stop_ seeing it now. It set her teeth on edge. She wanted to yell and scream, because she couldn’t shake the guilt that _she had made them feel like this—_ but, more than anything else, she wanted to _hold them._ She wanted to hug her friends tight to her chest and let them fall apart the way they still needed to. She wanted to apologize until she couldn’t anymore— for indulging Booker’s jealousy and commiserating over their grief without thinking of how harmful it could be; for him misunderstanding her, selling them out to Merrick’s lab with the words _this is what you wanted;_ for any and every moment she made them feel like they had to restrain themselves from what they needed. Because of Booker, and because of _her._

Andy had become an agent of the thing that hurt her. And she had hurt her family because of it. 

No wonder they wanted to fuck off to Malta. 

She stewed in the feeling for another two days, trying to find words for the enormity of what she felt. 

She studied Nico as he prodded at her healing side every morning and night, her gaze following his practiced hands as he went through the motions of disinfecting and treating, wrapping gauze tightly around her waist. Something in her chest went warm thinking about him practicing this with Joe, gently teasing him as he worked on some unblemished piece of skin. She pictured the ease of the moment, the way she’d seen them countless times over the centuries. 

It wasn’t like that now. He was tense, circles under his eyes eclipsing all the way around until they hooded his green gaze. His eyes focused like a laser while Joe sat on the other side of the living room, his pencil clutched in his hand as he watched them instead of sketching. 

Joe had filled a whole section of his sketchbook with fresh drawings and long passages of Arabic, his hands trembling without a pencil in them. Sometimes, it reached a point of frenzy, like there was too much in his brain to get onto the page. His jaw would work under his beard. She was used to the soft scratch of her friend’s pencil, tracing Nicky’s body with his eyes from wherever he was and copying it down into the book. Over the passing days, though, the look in his eyes was charged— anxiety, longing, grief. 

Joe had never been one for a poker face. He wore every emotion in every inch of his face and body. Usually, it was something Andy loved about him. She always knew what was going on with Joe, with little more than a glance. Now, though, the constant swirl of feelings in his gaze seemed so tiring to see. 

The opportunity to finally talk loomed in the middle distance, and Andy couldn’t tell if she dreaded it or hoped for it. It was imminent and necessary, though, and whether by that stupid destiny or fate that Nicky was always talking about, or just by happenstance, it finally happened on the sixth night.

Or maybe it was the seventh morning. It was late and dark, but she didn’t care about the time. 

She was avoiding her bed, wandering back in from the terrace after a slow, sleepless night of mapping the constellations of the French countryside. Andromache had been alive so long, even the stars had changed, their positions and arrangements shifting in the sky while she ran in circles repeating her own mistakes. 

Her footsteps were silent on the old wood floor after millennia of stealth as second nature. No matter how much she’d had to drink, her boots never seemed to stumble.

The door to Joe and Nicky’s room was left open. The bed was rumpled and empty, Nicky’s broadsword still in its sheath between the wall and the side table. There was still a handgun next to the alarm clock they never used. 

So, they were clearly not in bed, but there was no present danger. 

Then, she saw the dim glow of a light on the floor down the hall. She took a few slow steps, and heard the soft scratching of a pencil. It loosened something in her that she hadn’t known was tense. 

Andy let go of the gun tucked into her pants, and turned the corner with a soft sigh. 

Off of the living room, opposite of the kitchen, there were a few meters of extra space— more of a deep alcove than a small room. It was one of Andy’s favorite spots in the house, almost like a conservatory. A bank of windows covered most of the walls, and they always caught the light of the sun, no matter the time of day. Empty canvases were carefully stacked and stored all around, and an easel was collapsed in the corner. 

In the middle of the room, pressed up to the back windows, was a daybed that looked as old as either of the men currently on it. It was all carved wood and lovingly restored, painted designs that Joe probably mixed the pigment for himself. Sheets and crisp white pillows were wedged along the wall.

Joe lifted his head up from his sketchbook as she came into view, leaning back against the wall like he just couldn’t hold himself up anymore. He smiled, and it strangled her for some reason.

“Hey.” She rasped, not having talked for hours. 

He waved his pencil at her, setting his sketchbook aside, and revealing Nicky’s sleeping face resting on his thigh. He was curled up close along Joe’s leg, his back against the pillows behind him, and his hand tangled in the soft sweatpants covering his lover’s thigh. 

Andy felt her lips curve into a half a smile, stepping silently into the soft yellow light of their bubble and sitting on the edge of the bed. 

“Haven’t seen him sleep this deep in a long time.” She murmured, and she could see the emotion in every line of Joe’s face. 

He stroked his fingers into the soft hair at the back of Nicky’s head, nodding. “Me either, I don’t think.” He sighed, and Andy pulled her eyes from her friend’s sleeping face to meet Joe’s eyes. “He’s not sleeping lately. He can’t— not the way we usually do, anyway. He just says that he likes watching me _so at peace_ , that he feels like he has to _watch over me like we used to all those years ago_ … He waits for me to fall asleep, and then he sits up and…” 

“He has to look at you.” Andy whispered, remembering that first night, in a bedroll in Northern England with her heart in pieces, when Nicky had turned his back to them all, kissing Yusuf. The two of them cooing back and forth, still in the throes of what happened to them… 

Joe hummed a quiet affirmative, clearly thinking about it, too. He paused in stroking Nicky’s hair to just cradle his skull with his gentle hand. Andy hadn’t seen Keane’s headshot, but she knew those were always messy. She’d seen the blood that drenched the back of Nico’s shirt and the pieces of bone stuck in his matted hair. 

Headshots sucked. And Joe had been right there to watch his brain burst onto the floor. 

“Joe?” 

“Yeah, Boss?” He didn’t look up at her, just watching the spot where his hand cradled Nicky’s fully intact skull. More hesitant than she had ever felt touching them, Andy reached out and put her own hand over his. 

“He’s right here. You’re both safe.” She could hear how his breathing changed, hitching a little on the inhale and shuddering out. 

“We were there for _three days._ Three days under that woman’s knife, Andy.” His hand flexed and trembled under her palm, and her chest constricted, her gut roiling with anger and shame. “How could he _do this_ to us?” 

She didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t know if there was a single word left in her head that wasn’t _I should have seen it,_ or _I’m so sorry._

Under their joined hands, Nicky stirred, snuffling against Joe’s lap, still mostly asleep— “Yusuf?” His voice was sleepy and unsure, but he must've still felt the way the man around him shook, trying to keep from crying. 

Joe forced himself to take a deep breath, his fingers starting up a soothing stroke through his hair again. Andy moved her hand, sliding down to rest on Joe’s knee as she watched them. 

“Sono qui, cuore mio… go back to sleep, you need rest. You don't sleep enough, my Heart...” He kept up a quiet babble, flipping between languages— some of which Andy hadn’t heard in centuries. Mostly iterations of _sono qui, we are safe, it’s alright…_

And for all their grief and anger, there was none of the tension in their bodies like there had been in the past week. They were pressed together, close in every sense, not trying to hold themselves at bay for anyone else’s sake. Andy resisted the urge to touch the pattern of her pendant, to shuffle back from the moment. 

If she wanted to prove to them that this was okay, she would have to meet them where they were.

She waited patiently as Joe sent Nicky back off to sleep, letting her friend guide her back into their previous conversation. 

He met her gaze with the type of weariness that only a 900 year old man could convey. A man who led with his heart, and trusted them all so implicitly, and had been betrayed so _completely…_

“I’m so sorry, Joe.” She finally managed to say, “He was hurting so much, and I _know_ how that feels— I should’ve seen it—“ 

“No. No, no Andy, stop.” He sat forward, taking her hand as a means to stop her rambling apology, _“He_ did this. You’re a leader, you’re not telepathic… You can’t force someone to accept help. Nicky said it best— he created his own loneliness.” He let it settle, and she felt the words rattle around her head, logically computing, but not easing the erratic thump of her heart. 

Joe squeezed her hand and leaned back, glancing out the window into the darkness for a long moment. He didn’t let go of her, so she didn’t leave. 

“I keep going over it in my head. All that we went through, the way we _suffered._ And all the times we saw Booker in the past year— nothing seemed different. It just makes you wonder how long he was planning this, y’know?” His voice cracked a little, but he continued, “How many football matches, and dinners, and long conversations… Were we already _mice?"_

She flipped her hand under his to hold him back, gripping tightly. “You are _not_ mice, Joe.” 

He met her gaze again with a question burning in his eyes. He studied her face with his wise, age-old stare, and she wondered what he saw. She saw the heavy weight of grief on his shoulders, the constant relief of another day with his love, the constant _fear_ of losing him, and a question on the tip of his tongue. 

She knew that, whatever it was, it was going to hurt. If it wasn’t going to hurt, he would’ve already just said it. 

“Spit it out.” 

“D’you resent us, too?” 

He looked her right in the eye like he wanted it to be a challenge, but his voice was small. He didn’t want to know, but he knew he needed to. Just like she knew she needed to tell him. 

The wariness in his face was like a knife to the heart, but she didn’t shy away from his gaze. She swallowed, shaking her head with a watery smile, taking a moment to look at them. Her family. The men that had followed her to the edges of the earth. 

“Not anymore. I _did…_ I’m sure you remember.” She said, keeping her voice soft. Joe huffed a little laugh, his shoulders sagging with relief as if he had been braced for a blow. “But I’ve known you for far too long. I’ve _loved you_ for far too long to hold onto that. My…” she cleared her throat, voice constricting around the sob in her chest, letting out a shuddering breath, “I’ll miss Quynh forever. But I will give up my _last_ _life_ before I let either of you experience what I have. Never again, Joe, not for a minute.” 

By the time she had finished, there were tears running freely down her cheeks. They were hot, burning tracks down her face that she didn’t even try to wipe away. 

“So— so, could you two _quit it_ with this dance you’ve been doing this week?” She grinned, wobbly and bright, letting herself laugh a little, “If you need to do _this—“_ she gestured with her free hand at the two of them in the bed, “—in the middle of the day, that’s okay. Nile thinks you guys are cute, and… and being jealous of your relationship won’t bring Quynh back.” Her voice cracked, but Andy didn’t care. “Just don’t fuck off to Malta yet, I _can’t lose you right now.”_

Joe’s expression was an indescribable conglomeration of things, but it was worlds lighter than she’d seen since this whole mess started. His jaw was slack, his mouth slightly open with the shock, but his eyes glistened with tears and warmth, on the edge of a true smile. 

They let the silence hang for a minute. The adrenaline of finally saying it all out loud had swept through her, and she hoped that she hadn't gotten too loud. 

Joe squeezed her hand where they were still clasped together on top of his leg. 

_“Thank you,_ Andy.” He finally said, more breath than sound. His voice was still small, but there was no hesitance or worry there, only _relief._ There was a softness back in the set of his shoulders that he’d lost when Booker went away. 

She felt like she was seeing him for the first time since they were taken, since that tension settled in his bones, and grief and trauma made those circles around his eyes. 

Untangling their hands, she pressed her palm to his cheek and studied him. “Are you gonna be able to sleep sitting like this out here?” 

He only let out a huff of laughter, breaking into a grin, “No, I don’t suppose I will— I got a solid few hours, though, earlier. It _is_ nearly 4 AM, y’know.” 

She didn’t know that, and it must’ve shown on her face, because Joe rolled his eyes fondly at her. “You’re the one trying to heal a bullet wound, Boss. Get some rest.” 

“Yeah, yeah— so they keep telling me.” She tried to be gruff, but her smile was too soft, letting her thumb brush over his cheek, even as she stood. Her stitches tugged and she didn’t try to hide her wince. 

Joe was chewing the inside of his cheek absently, looking at her with the most earnest face she’d seen in seven thousand years. It made her heart clench in her chest, and something deep and binding lit her from within. She felt like she was seeing all the good of Copley’s board all in one face. 

Leaning down, Andy pressed her lips to the crease in her friend’s brow, letting it linger for a long second. Joe let out a quiet hum, wrapping his fingers around her wrist as she pulled back and smiled down at him. 

“Goodnight.” 

“More like Good Morning…” he teased, grinning. “I better not see you for a full eight hours.” 

She just chuckled, rolling her eyes and heading to the threshold, sleep starting to settle in over her eyelids. 

“Boss?” 

“Hm?” She leaned against the doorway, turning back to see Joe’s smile. Nicky’s cheek was pillowed on his thigh, his body curled loosely into him. Joe was reclined against the window, truly relaxing as the night sky turned from black to deep purple behind him. They looked like one of the paintings they claimed to inspire, worlds away from the sterile lab they’d been held in.

They looked _peaceful._ And if they couldn’t be happy right now, the least she could give them was peace. 

“I’m here.” He said, “We’re here whenever you need us. For as long as you want us.” 

All the jagged, broken pieces of her felt a little more whole, then. She believed him.


End file.
